In recent years, there has prevailed a print environment in which the user selects a desired one of a plurality of printers connected in a network environment, and issues a print request.
In such network environment, various printer devices, and many monitor utilities which monitor the status of jobs in each printer device and that of the printer devices in a host computer are known. Also, a monitor utility that utilizes a browser or the like is known.
Normally, such utility runs when the user launches a utility application with an intent to do so or when the utility is automatically launched in response to a document print request, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-149388.
Also, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 07-104951, the status of a printer device is often reflected on an icon on a desktop. According to this reference, the status data of a plurality of printers are graphically displayed using icons, and the user can issue a sleep start instruction or sleep cancel instruction to these icons via a mouse.
However, with the conventional monitor utilities of jobs and printer devices disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2002-149388 and 07-104951, every time the user wants to detect the status data of jobs and devices, he or she must launch such monitor utility application, resulting in troublesome operations.
When the monitor utility runs all the time, it may partially conceal display of another application window (e.g., a document processing application) on a limited display unit.
Furthermore, when the monitor utility runs all the time, it may increase not only the network load but also the processing load on a computer.
Furthermore, according to the utilities that monitor the status of a plurality of printer devices disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2002-149388 and 07-104951, there is a merit, i.e., the status of the plurality of printers can be recognized. However, the user most frequently uses a printer which is set as a default in the operating system in actual print jobs, and a scheme that allows the user to efficiently detect various status data in a printer which is used most frequently is demanded. Especially, in a print environment in a business environment, a plurality of logical printers are often registered in a predetermined client, and a scheme that allows the user to efficiently detect information associated with a default printer from these printers is required.
When the monitor utility is automatically launched to monitor the status of jobs and devices in response to a document print request, the user can recognize that the device suffers a paper jam or out-of-paper state. However, the user has already issued the print request in such state, and must re-issue a print request to another printer, resulting in inefficient print jobs.